Accelerationism
It’s very simple to grasp accelerationism. Accelerationism refers to the engagement with forms and forces of technology and abstraction that must, selectively, be accelerated to punch through the limits of a stagnant and inertial capitalism. It’s very difficult to grasp accelerationism. There are multiple forms and types of accelerationism, if that’s even the right name for it. Maybe it would be better called ‘redesigning’, for example (Reed 2014), or ‘extrapolation’ (Wark 2014). We don’t know yet what accelerationism could do, or be? It may be we need ‘create two, three, many accelerationisms’. — Benjamin Noys (2014) The most abstract definition is that it is positive oriented cybernetics. — Nick Land, 13o18 ...constant revolutionising of production... — Marx, 1848 The origin of this signal recedes beyond our grasp. — Vince Garton ... the fastest-flowing current social expression the world has ever known ... — Guattari, 1966 Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country. Otherwise the country will remain a small-peasant country — V. Lenin, December 22, 1920 The Tradition considers all movement as an acceleration or reduction of vibrations... — Mouravieff, 1961 ... the yearning to possess and lay claims over another person, and the pride of the ego. After that, everything else came tumbling down in a rush, following the law of acceleration. — Evola, 1934 The different species of accelerationism—whether self-conscious or not—are not deductive representations of a single concept. — Vince Garton We must be ready for a profound event in the divine order, toward which we are marching with an accelerated speed that must strike all observers. Terrible oracles already announce that the time has come. — Joseph de Maistre, Soirées de Saint-Petersbourg, on a type of apocalyptic acceleration Accelerationism is a type of edge culture based on the idea of speeding up a process, most notably, so far, the process of industrial development. In a wider sense, ‘accelerationism’ is obviously to prefer, to enact or to study the tendency or possibility for something to accelerate. Thus as a term for a stance in general, it means or is ‘to prefer acceleration’ or simply ‘to accelerate’—it is thus progressivism in the most neutral sense of the word, since it refers to a faster progression. Since ‘acceleration’ is a universal, panhuman, and trans-human variable, acceleration or accelerationism is in this sense unlimited, or only as limited as the cosmic process itself. Nietzsche suggested the acceleration of the "leveling of European man", and to "push what is falling" while Evola suggested accelerating "the process of modernity" for it to meet its end. The coining of the term itself is more recent, reportedly done by Benjamin Noys in 2010 to refer to Marxists or post-Marxists who espoused accelerating the dissolution of social relations referred to by Marx in the phrase "all solid melts", to come to the end of capitalism—and to come to a new ("communist") mode of social relations—also projected by Marx. A push for increased liquidification in a certain sense is an essential feature of capitalism, without which at least the historical instantation of it that took place in our history arguably could not have come into being. More accurately, accelerationism is not dependent on what many refer to as capitalism ("the profanation of all holy, and the nihilistic instrumentalisation of all"), as the same ends can be achieved through non-capitalist social relations: indeed, the Communist soviet union extensively used accelerationism as a rationalisation in and for its ideology, as well as for practically running the state, becoming one of histories greatest superpowers, with a military-industrial & scientific-academic complex only "matched" by the U.S.A., and perhaps briefly Germany. The acceleration of industrial production certainly is possible without "capitalism", since the radical social change wrought by industrial or technological developments precedes "capitalism" by millennia. For example, the Ancient Romans were already using means of acceleration caused by industrial developments to enact radical social change on their subjects, since a road is an accelerator of transport, and thus of industry and cultural dissemination, and the Romans laid sophisticated roads over the vanquished land's, some still being in use to date. In the statist or imperial context accelerationism is thus convergent with expansionism and territorialisation (dominisation or increased dominion if not also productivity maximsation). ' Considering that industrial accelerationism is not limited to a modern capitalist or a marxist context, we can define industrial accelerationism as the idea that certain technosocial processes that have historically characterised industry, should be expanded, repurposed, or accelerated in order to generate radical social change, such as a New Man or a "posthuman being." This idea is in itself perhaps not new, since for example the Protestants seized upon the mass produced written word to generate radical social change, for a New Man, as did the ancient makers of the Bible, almost 2.000 years ago, and the producers of buddhist texts, more than 2.000 years ago. Since the tendency to enact radical social change by activating technology that accelerates social change is not new, it can hardly be said that accelerationism is new, although the English word is. In the case of the buddhists, the activity of writing and disseminating may tho more have had to to with the temporal maximization of storing information, than of accelerating the changes wrought by the information. In terms of a more limited definition of ‘accelerationism’, it specifically means to use what Marx referred to as t''he ''constant revolutionising of production'' '''to solve certain perceived major problems of the human creature. To trace the genealogy of accelerationism is thus fraught with problems. On the most superficial level, accelerationism has existed for about a decade. At its unspoken core, it is impossibly ancient. — Vince Garton Context Accelerationism is best understood in the context of human cultural change and human industry, a chief concept in accelerationism being the acceleration of changes wrought by a cultural change, such as an industrial development. Humans positedly have always valued speed, no doubt one of the reasons why the horse became a more popular mode of transportation than the bull. Since humans compete, and speed is typically of value in competition, humans acted in various ways to increase the speed of the processes their efforts were for. Adopting horses for warfare was one of those things, and given this value man concocted an industry of breeding as best he could the fastest horses. Even more primary, faster procuration or production of edible food was a value in the food industry (the activity of gathering and making food), even in pre-homo sapiens stages, so the trans-human creature devised tools, in its competition with general nature for survival. Sub-human creatures are like man violent, and it's unknown if the tool for food industry, or the tool for armed force came first in the development of man, but arguably it is the former, since animals already use tools for food industry. Given history, obviously including archeology, it's probable that armed force came fast on the tracks of "armed" (i.e. entooled) food industry. Presumably, progress in tool making was already being made before the adopting of the horse for war making, but with the adoption of the horse war making was sped up. Accelerated. Being accelerated in warfare will have granted some superiority over perceived foes, enabling the accelerated a greater chance of conquering said foes, and thus a temporally greater record of doing so. Having conquered foes, it's probable that victors would have, so far as they could, adopted any of the vanquished's tools or ideas that were superior, like when the U.S.A. adopted industrial technology from the conquered Germans whom had been their foes in a war. Going back to the archeo- or prehuman, we can see how the acceleration of speed in one field, can lead to acceleration in another — i.e. a convergence effect — since it was in this position the speed of the horses which allowed tribe X to conquer tribe Y, and to adopt the latter's food industry tools, which in turn allowed faster production in the field of food. Increased speed in the warfield is a part of a definite chain of causes leading to increased speed in the food field. This game is still going on, and it is only accelerating. (See: Hypergame.) Technological developments have always wrought social change, in fact on the entire fabric, sometimes perceived by the students of history, other times perhaps not. Accelerationism is thus a universal and panhuman object, as well as prehuman, transhuman and posthuman. Outside of spirituality, accelerationism is essential to most conceptions of a ‘transhumanism’. Perhaps more apropos when speaking of human developments is to speak of ‘accelerators’ than the quaint disruptors—in any case, the terms are bound to become relatively interchangeable, as consciousness about Accelerationism increases. The idea of bringing radical social change through technology was central to many Marxist thinkers and to the ideology and operation of the Soviet Union — the government of the USSR set afoot many large scale programs especially to accelerate social changes, such as mass electrification and industrialisation. After achieving power, Lenin in 1922 said that Russia would remain a peasant country without mass electrification, a rationalisation for the acceleration of changes needed to bring about Russia's electrification. Notably, there are also some who wish for an acceleration of decline. Variants Since to accelerate something is a relatively "neutral" and widespread possibility, accelerationism is in a sense more common than one can currently quantify. For example, it doesn't seem wrong to speak of the desire of humans to build faster and faster vehicles, and faster and faster internet and computing, as a type of accelerationism. The tendency or desire to accelerate processes is relatively universal. People wish each other godspeed and a speedy recovery. Medical researchers, nurses and doctors, do their best with skill, training and practice, to try to assure their patients are accelerated in their recovery. Variants of accelerationism mix its idea with various other ideas, such as Capitalist, Communist, Anarchist, Leninist-Statist, Transhumanist, and Christian or Buddhist theorising, with the tendency for transhumanism perhaps being the chief among, and largely overlapping between, members. Accelerationist theory has been self-described by some of its authors (see below) as dividing into mutually contradictory left-wing and right-wing variants—while others still describe themselves as "Unconditional" in their Accelerationism. "Left-accelerationism" attempts to press "the process of technological evolution" beyond the constrictive horizon of capitalism, for example by "repurposing modern technology" for "socially beneficial" and "emancipatory" ends; apparently Landian "right-accelerationism" supports the indefinite intensification of capitalism itself, possibly in order to bring about a technological "singularity".Wikip. Some contemporary accelerationist philosophy takes as its starting point the Deleuzo-Guattarian theory of deterritorialisation, aiming to identify, deepen, and radicalise the forces of deterritorialisation with a view to overcoming the countervailing tendencies that suppress the possibility of far-reaching social transformation.[Wikip. Accelerationism may also refer more broadly, and sometimes pejoratively, to support for the deepening of capitalism in the belief that this will hasten its self-destructive tendencies and ultimately lead to its collapse.[Wikip. Many things have sped up productive processes, but nothing has accelerated them like the written word. Only the machine or the electronic device comes second to the written word in terms of accelerating cultural change. The convergence of the written word and the machine had an even greater accelerating effect, so that changes in culture that previously took centuries could be wrought in years or decades. (See: Hyperstition). After perhaps the Roman Catholic Church, the U.S. military-industrial complex is arguably the most accelerationist institution in history, including DARPA and its predecessors, obviously. The German military-industrial complex before and in WW2 is a competitor for that title, as well as the Soviet military-industrial complex — quantification of who ranks highest has not been done per se, in the terms of this article. China is a more recent, but menacing player, by many (e.g. Nick Land) projected to out-accelerate all the previous entries — in the oeuvre this is referred to as Neo-China. A number of philosophers have expressed apparently accelerationist attitudes, including Karl Marx in his 1848 speech "On the Question of Free Trade": : But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.7 Here's VG: The intellectual history of accelerationism remains largely unexplored, though critiques from intellectual history abound. A criticism often levelled at Land, for instance, is his supposed inadequacy as a reader of Deleuze and Guattari. This is at root an intellectual-historical argument, and the intellectual historian will recognise it as Skinnerian: a historical actor, Skinner’s maxim goes, cannot be ascribed any belief that they themselves would not have recognised as an adequate description of their beliefs. This is to some degree a fair critique when levelled at someone trying to present such a description of intentions, but the CCRU were competent and interesting investigators of Deleuze and Guattari precisely because they did not assume the posture of historicists recovering what these writers actually thought, or of scholars contributing a new and convincing reading to a burgeoning field of scholarship. The qwertopological decoding of A Thousand Plateaus and Barker’s geotraumatic investigations into the screaming of the earth were never supposed to unravel a fine jigsaw of meanings artistically assembled in the 1970s by a French philosopher and a psychoanalyst. They highlighted signals whose transmission the two men could only barely have recognised. In this sense, the historicist critique of CCRU’s ‘reading of Deleuze and Guattari’ misses the point. Clearly they are not simply unconnected, but too strong a preference for exposition leads academics down crumbling corridors to the charnel house of interpretive scholarship. Unleashing ideas—intercepting signals—demands a different approach. In the course of the history of ideas, reshaping and novelty have always trumped antiquarian precision. Just as the CCRU did more than to establish a particular school of Deleuze–Guattari interpretation, accelerationism in general cannot be considered a school of Deleuzianism, and critique of its appropriacy as such a school is misdirected. Many self-identified accelerationists do not consider themselves ‘Deleuzian’, and it bears mention that the name of Deleuze has not figured at all in this blog up to now. The Deleuzian character of much of contemporary accelerationism is a contingency, not a necessity. My own interaction with accelerationism began through reading Marx and Nietzsche. Its contours can equally be derived from other thinkers, perhaps countless others, if only you know where to look. To trace the genealogy of accelerationism is thus fraught with problems. On the most superficial level, accelerationism has existed for about a decade. At its unspoken core, it is impossibly ancient. Different focuses will yield wildly divergent results. No doubt an article on ‘accelerationism’ in some distant future edition of the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe would take care to highlight the term’s formulation by Noys, having traced the concern with ‘acceleration’ through obvious references back to Deleuze and Guattari, and from there to Nietzsche. It would look to the term’s adoption and disavowal by different groups on left and right in the mid to late 2010s. As an exercise in etymology this would be interesting enough; as a genealogical investigation it would be disastrous. Accelerationism is not a specific reading of Nietzsche any more than capitalism is a reading of Smith. A Marxian accelerationist does not need to have read a single page of A Thousand Plateaus to remain an accelerationist. Similar conclusions—similar sentiments—have been expressed from traditions seemingly almost entirely unaware of each other. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that it is best not to think of accelerationism, in the first instance, as a set of ideas at all. Land has described what he terms ‘libidinal materialism’ as more a ‘jangling of the nerves’ than a set of doctrines. Accelerationism is not identical with libidinal materialism, but the same observation seems abundantly to apply to it. With the appropriate historical sensibility, modulations of accelerationism soon well up in widely divergent contexts, all over the world, advancing along the storm-front of industrial capitalism. It emerges as a sensation of the acceleration characteristic of modernity itself, expressed in different ways by Marx, Hirato, Baudrillard, and plenty others. The drive to posit this expression in specifically philosophical form is perhaps peculiarly influenced by Western tradition. The sensation itself is not. This magic trick of flickering appearance and disappearance cannot be explained according to the conventions of conceptual history precisely because accelerationism is not a figment of the ideal history of concepts moving of their own accord, one carefully crafted ideology among others. It is an impulse proper to modern capitalism itself. Whatever letters are jammed before the slash, no systematised species of accelerationism can exhaust or perfectly transmit this underlying impulse: much is necessarily lost in the transformation from impulse to revelation. In Rahnerian style, we may say that the advent of capitalism has produced thousands of ‘anonymous accelerationists’, not to speak of anonymous accelerators who number many orders of magnitude more. This, indeed, may lie at the heart of the difficulties with identifying a pure and spotless ‘concept of acceleration’. The different species of accelerationism—whether self-conscious or not—are not deductive representations of a single concept. Their core appears to be something more fundamental—a mode of preconscious interaction that eludes exhaustive conceptual codification. The search for a genealogy of accelerationism rapidly becomes social, economic, physiological, geotraumatic. The origin of this signal recedes beyond our grasp. When it is written, then, the intellectual history and genealogy of accelerationism must look beyond the contingencies of its present expressions. To have any value, it must tap into the subterranean current of communication itself. Criticism If accelerationism means increasing capital entanglement speed, and capitalism is characterised by "everlasting uncertainty and agitation" — then accelerationism like capitalism surely must be transcended. In Noys’ account, accelerationism is the idea that things have to get worse before they can get better. The only way out of capitalism is the way through. The more abstract, violent, inhuman, contradictory, and destructive capitalism becomes, the closer it gets to tearing itself apart. Such a vision derives, ultimately, from the famous account of capitalism’s inherent dynamism in the Communist Manifesto. For Marx and Engels, capitalism is characterized by “constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation… All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.” Far from deploring such developments, Marx and Engels see them as necessary preconditions for the overthrow of capitalism itself. The trouble with accelerationism, according to Noys, is that it celebrates “uncertainty and agitation” as revolutionary in its own right. — Steven Shaviro posted on 3n2015 Yes as the etymology suggests utopia is not a place, but a teleological or limit concept - suggesting it cannot necessarily be attained but striven towads as a kind of 'regulative ideal'. Accelerationism, it appears collapses the utopic and the dystopic in an increasingly eminent future - such that the utopic can be attained by accelerating towards the dystopic - hence conflating their fundamental principles of opposition and neglecting the forms of reason that are necessary prerequisits for either of these limit societies. An accelerationist argument applied to Plato's typology of regieme types would suggest that the quicker a society arrives at tyrranny, the sooner it will become a republic or politea (Πολιτεία), which would ammount to an absurdist hypothesis going a step further than fatalism to suggest the ideal tyoe can be attained through its antipode by getting to the antipode faster. This fragile and specious argument rests on a weak reading of Marx and a blatant (deliberate) misreading of Deleuze, in my opinion. — Asif Akhtar m31-18, Facebook (Reza Negarestani's wall).] is fatalist romanticism — anon, c. 17 Accelerationism is the idea that if you accelerate class conflict by supporting neoliberal capitalism on steroids and oppressing the working class as much as possible, then they'll have no choice but to revolt against the bourgeoisie for you. — "RationalWiki" r. d18 “In our research people accepted acceleration as inevitable, both the thrills and the lack of control.” “All of modern history can be thought of as one spurt of acceleration after another. It's as if we think if we just speed up enough, we can outrun our problems. But we never do.” --- K. Bouskill Mar 7, 2019 Acceleration and revolution Essentially acceleration and revolution are the same thing, but there are at least two types of revolution. The revolution that increases quality, and the revolution that decreases it. When studying the French Revolution it is possible to see how these forces soon escape from the control of those who have evoked them. Once the Revolution was unleashed, it seems as if it assumed a life of its own, leading men, rather than the other way around; it eventually devoured its own “children” one by one. Its leaders, rather than real personalities, appear to be the embodiment of the revolutionary spirit and to be carried along as inane and automatic objects. They ride the wave, so to speak, as long as they follow the current and are useful to the goals set by the Revolution; but as soon as they try to dominate it or to stop it, the maelstrom submerges them. Some specific traits of the French Revolution include the speed and the power with which it spread and the speed with which events followed one another and obstacles in its way were overcome; in these traits what is visible is the emergence of a nonhuman element and a subpersonal reality that has a mind and a life of its own and that employs men as mere tools. ... The acceleration that characterizes all falling bodies causes the phase of individualism and rationalism to be overcome and to be followed by the emergence of irrational and elemental forces characterized by mystical overtones. — Evola 1934 Vulgar representations One of these theories is called accelerationism—the idea is that hyper-stimulation of the market on a mass scale will end with the collapse of capitalism. Consume like crazy, only drink from styrofoam, and throw handfuls of dead batteries into our oceans so the impending apocalypse can hurry up and get over with. — Charlie Ambler | Mar 19 2015, Vice Magazine Not that anyone should care, rightly, but I have spent a long time carefully explaining to a journalist why ‘accelerationism’ is not cognate with the NZ manifesto and that ‘left accelerationism’ is not catastrophist. In fact, it seems, that this ‘manifesto’, from what I have seen reported and quoted, has a classic logic of terror argument in the ‘exemplary act’ of violence. This is then linked to a internet culture notion of ‘chaos’ and ‘subversion’ as the scrambling of political signifiers (including that of accelerationism, which does of course have its right / NRx form). Anyway, while trivial in the face of the horror of that act, which is so despicable, not allowing this ‘chaos’ to spread into all our signifiers is something. --- Benjamin Noys, a. 19mar2019 on his Facebook wall. Authors List of authors noting on or contributing to Accelerationism (Accelerationists): * Nick Land * Reza Negarestani * Vince Garton * "Akira" * Amy Ireland * Justin Murphy * "Xenogothic" * Nick Srnicek * Benjamin Noys * Mark Fisher * Ray Brassier * "realMaxCastle" Twitter personality * Edmund Berger * "n1x" @NyxLandUnlife * Guðjón Eiríksson * The Guardian article author, Andy Beckett. Media * Blogpost, «So, Accelerationism, what’s all that about?» deontologistics wordpress.com /2018/02/ * Blogpost, «Do u (even) /acc bro?», by "xenogothic" 25f19 * Book, «Malign Velocities — Accelerationism and Capitalism» "Against the need for speed, Malign Velocities tracks acceleration as the symptom of the ongoing crises of capitalism." e-book £7.99 || $11.99 Oct 31, 2014 978-1-78279-299-4 * "RationalWiki" on Accelerationism. * «Ep. 58: Synthetic Zero’s Michael James on Speculative Realism, Post-Nihilism, Accelerationism, & Climate Catastrophe» 22f19 on podcast «Parallax Views w/ J.G. Michael». Some of the contents of this episode were replied to a few days later by "xenogothic" in his blogpost «Do u (even) /acc bro?» and on Twitter by "realMaxCastle" Rhizomata "Let a thousand accelerationisms bloom." — probably not me. * Edge culture; Accel; Debate about Accelerationism; Defamation of accelerationism * Proto-Accelerationism * Misinformation about accelerationism; Anti-violence Accelerationism * Pacifist accelerationism; Humanist accelerationism; Transhumanist accelerationism * Futurist accelerationism; Jewish Accelerationism; Zionist Accelerationism * Left Accelerationism; Right Accelerationism; Gender Accelerationism; * Accelerationism and Humanism * Unconditional Accelerationism; Christian Accelerationism; * Gay Accelerationism; Post-Accelerationism; Accelerationism in Japan; * Sino-Acceleration; Primitivist Accelerationism; * Racist accelerationism; Antiracist accelerationism * Accelerationism and terrorism; Accelerationism and nihilism * Afro-accelerationism; Horrorist accelerationism. * Style in Accelerationism; Aesthetics and Accelerationism; Accelerationism and Romanticism. * Accelerationism in the Soviet Union * Accelerationism and anonymity; Accelerationism and mysticism * Utopian Accelerationism; Wanker Accelerationism; Lifestyle Accelerationism * Marxist accelerationism; Socialist accelerationism * Medical accelerationism * Accelerationism and Psychology * Acceleration of decline; Acceleration of chaos; Acceleration of consumption; Acceleration of production; Acceleration of struggle; Acceleration of violence; Acceleration of growth; Acceleration of dissolution; Acceleration of purity spiraling; Negative accelerationism; Acceleration of entropy; Acceleration of negentropy Conversely * See conversely: Decelerationism; Primitivism. Related * Related: Transhumanism; Futurism; Millennialism; Apocalypticism; Techno-optimism. * Process: Dialectics; Adoptation; Commercialization; Commodification; Industrialization; Marketing; Iteration. * Influenced by: Industrialism; Capitalism; Rationalism; The Enlightenment; Leftism; Socialism. Accelerationism has appearances in Pop Culture. "1967, an acclaimed young American science fiction writer, Roger Zelazny, published his third novel. «Lord of Light»." Sayings "The leveling process of European man is the great process which should not be checked: one should even accelerate it..." — Nietzsche — a statement often simplified, following Deleuze and Guattari, to a command to "accelerate the process".9 Julius Evola in 1934's «Revolt Against the Modern World», suggested to accelerate the process of modernity since that would bring its demise sooner, and thus a restoration of a traditional society. "Always deterritorialize! Or so goes the mantra of recent "accelerationist" theory. Intoxication against intoxication, schizophrenia against schizophrenia, delirium against delirium--the accelerationist tendencies of millennial life are laid bare in this concise volume by the author who first suggested the term. From the historical avant-garde, through Detroit techno and science fiction, to Nick Land and the Cybernetic Cultures Research Unit (CCRU), Benjamin Noys reveals the ideological fantasies of speed. We should dismiss accelerationism for its capitalophilia, he concludes, but preserve it for its extremism: go far, go deep and go negative to get real."'' ~ Alexander R. Galloway'' Category:Convergence theory Category:Marxism Category:Post-Marxism Category:Edge ideas